Sruthi Ganapathy Raman
Two life-long friends (Sasikumar as Aadhi and Unni Mukundan as Karuna) with quite a lot of clout living in Kombai, Theni, are faced with a conundrum when a politician has eyes for a land belonging to their ancestral temple.
A mass film that smartly weaponises soori’s vulnerability. RS Durai Senthilkumar has adapted Vetri Maaran’s familiar yet engaging story about morality with Soori as its dark horse
There’s no denying the fact that Garudan is an in-your-face, excessively violent — we’re talking chopped arms flung in the air sort of violent — mass film. It is also a film with one of the most garden variety sources of conflict.
It is a film that has dialogue that blames “pon, pen, mann/ gold, women and land” for all the violence that its walking testosterones unleash. However, Garudan is also a film that has an efficient dark horse snuck inside its templated premise: Soori.
The film is mostly engaging because of the comedian’s turn as a new kind of “mass” actor — one that commands respect with his tenderness. Since the film smartly centres much of its emotional core on a premise that we’ve seen play out with many iterations of the Mahabharatha on screen.
Jithu Madhavan crowned Fahadh Faasil a modern mass king in Aavesham by fully surrendering to the actor’s wild yet delicate side. Durai Senthilkumar tries to do the same with Soori. While it might not be as effective in its writing, Soori quite easily makes up for it in Garudan.